


There've Been Good Things, Too

by storybycorey



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-03
Updated: 2018-11-03
Packaged: 2019-08-17 02:24:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16507559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/storybycorey/pseuds/storybycorey
Summary: It’s witnessed a lot for a couch.  A lot, a lot, a lot.  Depravity, desperation, death. Much more than a typical piece of value-priced furniture would expect from a lifetime.But there’ve been good things, too.  Tenderness and trust. Passion.





	There've Been Good Things, Too

Dark green leather.  Not black, no, though at a glance some may make that mistake. _Deep forest green_ , its tag had read.   _Clearance_ , its tag had also read, _$299_! The man rented a Uhaul that day and paid a couple teenage guys from the building $10 each to help him navigate the stairwell.

It’s witnessed a lot for a couch.  A lot, a lot, a lot.  Depravity, desperation, death. Much more than a typical piece of value-priced furniture would expect from a lifetime.

But there’ve been good things, too.  Tenderness and trust. Passion.

The man who bought the couch was called a Fox.  The couch didn’t understand this, since it had seen foxes on TV, and they looked nothing like the man, but since it was a couch, it didn’t understand lots of things.

In the early days, there were people in the apartment besides the Fox.  Friends— sweat-stained and carefree, joking about missed three-pointers while opening cans of beer. An eclectic threesome— Larry, Curly, and Moe, arguing conspiracies late into the night.  A girl occasionally— long legs, breathy voice, brunette, blonde, doesn’t really matter— every version but One slipped out before dawn to never return.

The One though, the one that _did_ return, again and again and again, is when things began to change.

She arrived for the first time one evening, prim and proper, plaid suit overwhelming her small, compact  frame. Her eyes flitted from one messy pile to another as he swept the coffee table clean.  There was something different about her, and about the Fox _with_ her, right from the start.  She sat more gingerly than the others, crossed her ankles like her mother probably told her polite young ladies should do.  Unlike the Ashleys and the Crystals, this one didn’t slide out of her clothes, didn’t climb into his lap, she didn’t squeal his name with her tongue in his mouth.

Instead, she looked through his takeout menus and ordered an extra-large pizza (onions on half) and got promptly down to business.  Laid files across the dark green leather and debated with him until well past midnight.

The Fox wore a giddy, twelve-year old smile on his face long after she bade him goodnight.

This one was a Scully, the couch learned.  And a Scully, it also learned, is something special.

Fish died, Hugo Boss suits died, the TV set he’d bought at the same time as the couch died.  But the Scully didn’t die.

She lived, despite the fact that there were those who obviously intended otherwise.  And on top of living, she stayed, regardless of how often he attempted to push her away. She was an extraordinary thing, this Scully, and the Fox loved extraordinary things.

She was gone once—missing, abducted.  The couch didn’t know the meaning of those words, but it saw the Fox’s reaction—how he sat, gun in his hands and tears on his cheeks, her name a desperate sob from his lips.

The couch tried its hardest to wrap its arms around him, but things just don’t work that way.  So it held him, stoically and solidly, until fitful sleep claimed him in the darkest hours of the morning.  It’s all the couch could do.

She returned though.  How, the couch didn’t know. All it knew was the smile on the Fox’s face and the relief that bled out his body and onto the leather, the way he hung up the phone and whispered her name, “Oh Scully.”

People didn’t return in the Fox’s life.  But the Scully did.

She fed the fish sometimes, gave them too much in fact, but it made the couch happy.  She cared—about the fish, but especially about the Fox— and if there’s anything he needed, it was someone who cared.  She fed him, too, made him eat salads and vegetables along with their takeout, brought him vitamins and soup each time he was sick.

The phone messages stopped.  The ones from Angel and Destiny, offering him his first three minutes free because _they missed him so much_ and _it’s been way too long_.  They were replaced instead by “Mulder it’s me.”

The couch began to realize that the man really wasn’t a Fox; he was a Mulder. Ever since the Scully arrived, he’d changed, so his name must’ve changed, too.

Late nights were another thing that changed. No more scratchy, worn VHS tapes, bodies writhing up on the screen.  Just his cellphone in his hand and her voice still lingering in his ear. His saliva-slickened pumps were desperate, and her name choked from his throat as he came.

He’d clean up afterwards, wipe away the evidence, shame written all over his face.  Sometimes she’d sit there, in the very spot he’d come apart the previous night, and not even realize it.  

The couch wondered whether the Scully knew that he loved her. It wondered whether she loved him back.

The Mulder died once, or at least pretended to.  The couch cringed at the body right there at its feet, white sheet garish against dark green leather.  It wasn’t actually him, the couch knew that, but when the Scully came in and they lifted the sheet away… In that moment, the couch wished more than anything for a voice.

The couch didn’t know normal.  It only knew what it saw each day in the little apartment.  And there, things like people dying, people being sick, people dealing with very not-normal things happened all the time.   And so, to the couch, those things were normal.

For a long time, the Scully was the one who was sick.  Very sick.  There were bloodied tissues in the trash, her body weighing less and less each week against the cushions.  The Mulder cried quiet tears at night.  It was a dark time in the apartment, a heavy sort of darkness that no amount of Twilight Zone or Late Night Sci-Fi Marathons seemed to lift.  The couch was worried for both of them.

There was a phone call one day though, one that somehow, magically, made everything better.  The Mulder cried once again, but this time in joy, and immediately the darkness was lifted. The apartment felt brighter, airier. The Scully was still weak, but her cheeks were pink and her smile was genuine the next time she stopped by.  The couch breathed a leather-scented sigh of relief.  If she hadn’t returned, there’s no telling what the Mulder may have done.

The Scully had become an essential part of his life, the couch could see this.  She was more important than anything else—more important that the conspiracies he watched about on TV, more important than the aliens on the covers of all of the magazines, even more important than the little girl in the framed photo sitting atop his desk.

The Scully had become everything.

For years, she was there— sometimes only monthly, but oftentimes weekly, even daily. Sometimes she was there even when the Mulder wasn’t.  During those visits, the couch tried its hardest to be extra comfortable, extra inviting.  She always seemed stressed when she was alone, and the couch just wanted her happy.  Because when she was happy, the Mulder was happy, too.  And when both of them were happy, the couch was the very happiest.

The couch had only a vague understanding of holidays.  Parades on TV, the Mulder home from work on days he’d usually be gone.  An occasional phone call from a mother, bits of evergreen here or there. _Christmas_ was just a word.

The Scully showed up late into the night one year, late enough to be considered early in fact, but the Mulder hadn’t yet gone to sleep. There was snow outside and that word _Christmas_ hung in the air.  The couch sensed something special about the night.  Gifts were exchanged, and instead of arguing, instead of eyes rolling or brows arching, instead of “Scully, why can’t you—“ or “Mulder, do you really—“, instead of those things, there was laughter.  There was giddiness. There was affection.

She laid her head on his shoulder afterwards, for just a few moments, until murmuring in her soft, warm voice, “I’m sorry, but I’ve gotta…” and dragging herself away. She pressed a kiss to his temple, whispered, “Merry Christmas, Mulder” and was gone.

The couch understood Christmas after that.  

They watched movies sometimes, the Scully and the Mulder, after working all afternoon, after finishing all the pizza.  The couch suspected that’s really the reason she was there, to drink cold beers and make fun of his choice in cinema, and that the working all afternoon was just an excuse.  Sometimes she’d fall asleep just moments in, tucked into the corner, or on the rarest of occasions, slumped soft and sweet against his shoulder.  He’d lower the volume and leave the movie running, all the way through until the last bit of credits and the whirr of the tape rewinding, before nudging her with his elbow and whispering her name. Those were the couch’s favorite nights.  Those nights, the couch was almost positive the Mulder’s and the Scully’s hearts were connected in some strange otherworldly way.

The Scully’s heart was taken once, not on a movie night but on a regular afternoon.  It scared the couch more than any other thing that had happened.  There was blood, so much blood.  The couch tried its hardest to do something—to scream for the Mulder, to lug itself over and protect her.  She lay there gasping, and all the couch could think was “but her heart was the most beautiful thing about her.”

The Mulder arrived though, and as soon as he clutched the Scully to his chest, she was somehow mysteriously whole again.  The couch knew then that it had been right- their hearts were bound in a way that a simple piece of living room furniture could never understand.

They held each other for a long time that day, long after the Scully stopped crying.  He pulled her into his lap and leaned back against the couch’s leather leg, and it sat behind them as reassuringly as it possibly could.

When bad things like that happened in the apartment, it was almost too much for the couch to bear. But then good things happened, too, and it couldn’t imagine living anywhere else.

There was something called a Y2K.  The couch had heard the term on TV, had sensed the excitement surrounding it.  Very late one evening, the night this Y2K was expected to happen, the Mulder and the Scully arrived full of bruises and scratches.

He wore a sling, and she flitted around him like a hummingbird, fussing over his arm, fidgeting about his neck.

She was nervous, the couch could tell.

“I’m fine,” he told her, “I’ll be fine.”

“But your medicine, your arm, your—,” she countered.

“Scully, I’ll be fine,” he told her again, and then gently grasped her wrist.

The couch watched as he tried to catch her eye, but she tucked her chin to her chest. “Okay,” she murmured, “I guess I’ll just…” She began to pull away, turning toward the door, but the Mulder tugged her back.

“Hey,” he said tenderly, stroking his thumb across her wrist, “Listen, it doesn’t have to mean any—”

But she stopped him then, reaching up on her toes and kissing him softly on the lips, cupping the back of his neck with her hand.  She lingered there, and the couch imagined the swell of romantic music that happens in movies, imagined the screen fading slowly to black.

But instead of those things, the Scully pulled away and she smiled, her cheeks turning the most lovely shade of pink.  “Now we’re even,” she whispered, “Happy New Year, Mulder.” And she was gone before he even had a chance to respond.

The couch realized then what all the excitement had been over Y2K.

They touched more after that.  They’d always touched a lot, from what the couch could tell, but now their touches were accompanied quite often by looks, by teasing, by shy little smiles.  When they sat together on the couch, the Scully allowed her thigh to touch his, when they watched a movie, she let him play with her hair.  There were still arguments, _discussions_ — after all, they were still the same two people— but there was also something else.  The couch felt the energy grow between them each time they sat on its cushions.

The Mulder’s mother died one day.  The couch had only seen her once or twice.  She wasn’t the sort of mother they show on TV, doting over her children in her frilly, flowery apron, but the couch had come to realize that not many things are like they show on TV.

It made the couch sad.  Nobody’s mother should die, even if they weren’t the type to bake cookies while helping with homework.  But the Mulder didn’t seem sad.  He seemed fine. He listened to her message without shedding a tear, played it so many times, the words made no sense anymore.  

When the Scully arrived though, the couch realized he was not fine.  Not at all.

She held him while he cried, petted his hair and shushed against his ear, led him to the couch and held him some more.  It was a terrible thing to hear, him sobbing like that.  “It’s okay, it’s okay,” she whispered, pressing kisses to his hairline, his cheek.

Soon though, the kisses were not just at his hairline.  Soon, he was clutching her to him and searching for her mouth.  “Mulder,” she whimpered in protest against his lips, but then his hands swept through her hair and the couch heard her moan in surrender.  They kissed and they kissed, roughly, desperately, until he slid down her neck and began yanking apart her buttons.

“Oh God,” she gasped, as his mouth landed on her breast through her bra. “Mulder, no.”  He was frantic, grabbing at her, clawing at her, but she gently pushed him away.

“Not…,” she whispered, catching her breath. “God, I want… but not like this, Mulder. Not like this…”

He slumped back against the couch and curled into a ball as she sadly put herself back together.  She draped herself over him and rested her cheek on his shoulder.  The couch cried silent tears all night, and they lay like that until morning.

The couch wondered sometimes, what had happened to the recliner that sat to its right at the furniture store, what had happened to the loveseat that sat to its left.  It wondered what a different life it would have led if a college student had bought it, whether there would be fish or science fiction movies or a Scully.  The couch had seen _Animal House_ , and there was nothing even remotely like a Scully in _Animal House_.  There was nothing remotely like a Mulder either.

The Mulder was gone for a few days, came home with a baseball cap on.  The couch didn’t know what a Stonehenge was, didn’t know why he and the Scully were drinking tea instead of their usual beer.

There was something different about her that night.  The couch could see it.  The Mulder could see it, too.  She closed her eyes and laid down her head, and something in the way her weight relaxed against the leather was more peaceful than anything the couch had ever felt.

The Mulder got up and shut down the apartment—locked the door, turned off the lights.  Then he sat back down, laid his head right next to hers, and he watched her. They breathed together, the two of them, in and out against the cushions.  The couch couldn’t be sure, but it thought it could feel their hearts beating together as well.

She shifted a bit when his fingers brushed her cheek, and when he threaded them through her hair, she hummed.

“M’sorry,” she mumbled, eyes opening.

“S’okay,” he whispered, fingers continuing to stroke through her hair.

They sat there, heads just inches apart, and looked into each other’s eyes.  Something was happening, the couch could feel it—decisions being made, walls being torn away.

The Scully traced her thumb slowly over his lips.

“Like _this_ ,” she whispered.

The couch thought about that terrible night, just months ago, when mothers were dead and the timing all wrong.  It thought about that college student, who by now would’ve probably put the couch out on the curb or tossed it into the dump.  It thought about choices and decisions and paths, about how lucky it had been that fateful day the Mulder walked into a furniture store.

He pulled the Scully into his lap and he kissed her, and already the couch knew this time was different than all the others— the Ashleys and the Crystals, the women who never returned.  He kissed the Scully as though she were a delicate glass-blown ornament, a treasured Faberge egg.  The Ashleys and the Crystals weren’t treasures— they weren’t even close.

“Scully,” he breathed against her lips, “Scully.”  She wound her fingers through his hair and she kissed him back.  The couch thought about the tapes from the VCR, the ones the Mulder used to watch, with moaning, groaning, squealing women, with grunts and slaps and screams.  There were no tender touches, no loving, whispered words between the couples on those tapes.  No wonder the Mulder had abandoned them.  Those tapes were nothing compared to what the two of them were sharing.

He laid her against the cushions, peeled away her clothes. The couch was in awe of her beauty, and the Mulder seemed to be, too.  She belonged in a museum, this Scully, alongside the Aphrodite, standing beside the Venus de Milo. She deserved to be carved into stone by Rodin.

He kissed her and he kissed her, from her chin to her breasts to her navel.  When he kissed her even lower, she lifted her hips with a gasp.  “Later,” she breathed, tugging him back up, “I want… now…” They fumbled together to remove his clothes, slid hungry, open hands against each other’s skin.

She whimpered his name when he slid inside, and the couch was sure it saw tears in her eyes. They moved together until there wasn’t a Mulder there anymore; there wasn’t a Scully. There was only a beautiful tangle of limbs rising and falling on a worn old Navajo blanket.

The couch already knew their hearts were connected.  It began wondering whether when two people loved each other enough, they actually became one.

As their momentum grew, she clutched at his shoulders. She gasped his name, and he answered her with a moan.  “I’m… I’m…,” she whimpered, arching beneath him, opening her lips against his jaw.  With desperate, frantic kisses, they fell apart, one half of the tangle after the other.

They held each other afterwards, pressed slow kisses to cheeks, to eyelids, to lips. When the Mulder rearranged the blanket to cover them, he wore the same twelve-year-old smile he’d worn that very first night she visited his apartment.

“I s’pose…,” the Mulder murmured against her chin, “I s’pose I should’ve been a gentleman and invited you into the bedroom.  You deserve more than my ratty old couch, Scully.”

She looked him in his eye very seriously then, and the couch felt a moment of panic. She’s sat on its cushions, she’s slept in its arms, she’s cried against its legs…

“No,” she said gently.  “Mulder, it was…”  She paused, cupped his cheek in her hand.  “It was perfect. I love this old couch.  It feels like… _you_.  It feels like home.”

It’s witnessed a lot for a couch.  A lot, a lot, a lot.  Depravity, desperation, death. Much more than a typical piece of value-priced furniture would expect from a lifetime.  But there’ve been good things, too.  Tenderness and trust. Passion.

Couches can’t do much.  They can’t smile.  They can’t speak, they can’t move.

But some couches— the very, very special ones— those couches have hearts.  And couches with hearts can do something almost no other piece of furniture can do.  They can love.

The Mulder and the Scully lay intertwined for a long time that night.  The couch, as always, lay beneath them.  And between the three of them, there was enough love for the chair, the coffee table, the television set, and the fish tank.

There was enough love in the Mulder’s apartment that night for a whole damn furniture store.


End file.
